Ad hoc committee to study pay raises for City of Lawton executives

A City of Lawton ad hoc committee will have input into an executive-level salary scale after action taken Tuesday.

The City Council has been working on a pay scale for more than a month. The council voted June 6 to increase the minimum hourly pay for employees to $15 an hour. Recent discussion has centered on creating a new executive-level salary category; however, only one person currently employed by the city — the deputy city manager — would benefit.

“Most of our executive positions are below market, significantly below market,” said Human Resources Director Craig Akard at a previous meeting, adding the deputy city manager position is “very far behind” market value.

Previously, the council had directed city staff to compare Lawton’s salary ranges with similar positions in several cities of comparable size, including Norman, Edmond, Midwest City, Moore and Wichita Falls, Texas.

Akard started to present those findings to the council on Tuesday, but council members decided they still didn’t have enough information to make a decision.

“We need to look at more cities and collect more data,” Ward 5 Councilman Allan Hampton said. “Some more vetting needs to be done.”

Ward 8 Councilman Randy Warren agreed, saying he didn’t think the council was accomplishing anything by looking at average salaries of cities that don’t have job descriptions.

Mayor Stan Booker said that Lawton seems to have more directors and deputy directors than other cities.

Booker than appointed a three-man ad hoc committee comprised of Allan, Ward 6 Councilman Bob Weger and Ward 4 Councilman George Gill to study the issue. No time table was given for the three men to report back to the council.

“They will be much more nimble and can get this done,” Booker said of the ad hoc committee.

The issue of adjusting the pay scale for city employees came about after the city hired JER HR Group to analyze its pay structure and employee classification scale. The firm found the City of Lawton is more than 20 percent behind the market average for comparable cities, according to statistics cited by Akard.

City officials also have said the City is having a hard time recruiting employees and retaining the employees they have. Officials say the city has been average 100 empty positions, ranging from engineers to those with commercial driver licenses.

The city will fund the raises by deleting 44 positions that have been vacant for more than six months.